


Adjustment

by TwinIvoryElephants



Category: Gone Series - Michael Grant
Genre: AU where Orc survives the FAYZ, Abusive Parents, Slice of Life, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24588418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinIvoryElephants/pseuds/TwinIvoryElephants
Summary: After several reconstructive surgeries, Orc struggles to adjust to his life after the FAYZ.
Relationships: Astrid Ellison/Charles "Orc" Merriman
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Adjustment

Everyone told him about the missile after the fact. Orc couldn’t remember himself. He remembered Gaia, and her striking green eyes, but after that, everything was gone. All he remembered was waking up in a hospital room, feeling cold and strangely naked and endlessly, endlessly tired. The minute he woke up, surrounded by machines beeping and tubes snaking out of patches on his wrists, he wanted to sleep for a thousand years.

His father and mother came to visit him. They weren’t there when he first woke up, but they were the second time. The first thing Orc noticed was that there were streaks of gray in his mother’s hair, and her cheeks were hollow. The second thing he noticed was that his dad had lost weight. He was still strong and muscled, intimidating—but smaller, somehow. His head looked bigger on his shoulders.

No one knew what to say to each other. They just stared.

“How are you feeling, Charles?” asked his mother after a long pause. Her voice trembled. 

Orc moved his thick, dry tongue around in his mouth. “Sleepy,” he said. His voice was raspy with disuse, his head foggy. When he turned his head, he saw the pale white of his wrist. He moved his fingers, his human fingers, and felt a burst of euphoria. It was over. The FAYZ was over, his suffering in that big stone prison of a body was over. His flesh hung loosely and oddly, he could feel it, _but he could feel it_. His head fell back on the cot’s plastic pillow. He caught his breath while staring at the blinding light of the overhead light. 

His mother burst into tears. As Orc drifted off into another groggy sleep, he heard her whisper to his father, “What _happened_ to him?”

He hardly remembered the surgeries. The doctors made him look as normal as possible, tucking and snipping off the loose skin that had accumulated underneath the stone as he starved. Orc heard something about skin grafts, but neither of his parents would let him know what the doctors told them. He didn’t mind, much. He didn’t want to know. All he wanted was to not be tired all the time.

When he finally was released, Orc discovered that it had been about a month since the dome had disappeared. He watched news reports on their new television at their new house, which was bigger and fancier than their old one. They’d bought it with the donations that came with being one of the families affected, his dad told him. He didn’t sound happy or sad upon revealing this fact, just plain. Practical.

His mother was weepy, even more than she had been before. And she was always touching him. Orc didn’t mind at first; he wasn’t ready to leap into his mother’s arms like some kids were once the dome came down. But, he tried to reason, she always tried to be good. Mostly.

 _Forgive each other just as God forgave you,_ he thought automatically as his mother clutched him and wept on his shoulder, soaking the sleeve of a shirt that now hung loose on his emaciated frame. Still, after a while, he found himself avoiding her. His father, too—not that he ever touched him. His dad seemed to do his best to go on living like he never existed, like he’d never come back into their lives.

Occasionally, he had dreams about Howard. They were always the same. Howard would be trying to open a vending machine with a crowbar, like Cookie and some others in his old gang had tried at the beginning of the FAYZ, when Orc was still captain. Howard would be trying and failing to break it open, cursing and sweating. He’d ask Orc for help, but he was stuck to the tile floor of the convenience store. 

“Come on, man,” Howard yelled every time. “Help me, or the other kids will get to it.”

“You’re dead,” Orc would say—or try to say. His tongue was thick and slow in his mouth. All he could do was watch, unable to speak, as Howard struggled and struggled. Finally, he’d smash the vending machine window, and the shards would scatter everywhere. Orc would wake up, panting and sweating, his heart racing.

He had gotten out of the hospital too late to go to Howard’s funeral. Mr. and Mrs. Bassem had a private thing set up, only for family, his mom told him.

People were everywhere, wanting to get a glimpse of the boy who was covered in rock, whose gravel skin had been blown apart, revealing the malnourished, burned human underneath. His dad kept the curtains closed at all times, but they could still see their silhouettes moving around. Orc was told to stay indoors. That was fine with him; all he wanted to do was be alone. He wanted to be alone until he could bulk up and be normal again. Pre-FAYZ normal. He was too skinny, his collarbone poked out. He looked, his father said one day, apropos of nothing, like “one of those starving kids in Africa.”

The next day, his mother bought him some dumbbells. Orc used them. It was something to do. 

Soon after his release from the hospital, Orc saw Astrid on TV. She was saying something about all the kids who hadn’t made it up on a stand in front of a big crowd. His parents had gone out to some sort of church function. He was alone in the house. He watched her, then closed his eyes, letting her words wash over him without really listening. It made him too sad to hear about all the dead kids. It made his gorge rise, made him want to puke. He couldn’t afford to—he needed all the nourishment he could get.

Fifteen minutes later, Orc turned the TV off. He scrounged up a pad of lined paper and a pencil from the kitchen, balanced the pad of paper on his knees, and began to write in hesitant chicken scratch:

_Dear Astrid_

_Hope your doing OK. I got out of the hospital about 2 months ago. My skin is normal now. I’m all healed up. It would be good to_

Orc tore the paper off the pad, balled it up, and threw it aside. He couldn’t mail her anything, anyway—he didn’t know her address. Maybe he could call her instead, he thought. It’d be nice to hear her voice. But he didn’t have her phone number, either.

His appetite came back in waves. Sometimes he’d be ravenous; other times he felt no hunger at all, like his stomach had turned into a solid brick in the middle of his gut. His mother made him big meals. Orc wanted to enjoy them. He ate all her baked potatoes, all the cuts of steak she put in front of him, the side dishes of collard greens and peas and sliced carrots. He ate them because they were good, because they were so much better than the endless monotonous stream of fish and cabbage that came out of the FAYZ (he didn’t think he’d be able to eat cabbage or fish for as long as he lived—even the thought made him nauseous). The food tasted heavy on his tongue, sat like rocks in his stomach. 

As the months wore on and the journalists gradually stopped coming to gawk at him and his family, Orc went out a lot. He ambled around his new, strange neighborhood, feeling lost. He wasn’t supposed to be here. But he was. He looked at the evening stars coming out and smelled the cool night air and heard the crickets.

He had to get used to it.

His father was still drinking. Orc eyed his cans of Budweiser in the refrigerator, especially late at night. _God save us from temptation,_ he thought. _Or something._ Every night, he stood there. He knew his dad would beat on him if he stole a beer, but that was before. Maybe it would be different now. Maybe his dad would understand.

Before going upstairs, Orc grabbed the Bible from his mother’s little bookshelf in the living room. He flipped through it in the safety of his bedroom, squinting and mouthing the words as he read.

He wished he could talk to Astrid.

Eventually, his mom started talking about school. His dad laughed when she first brought it up at the dinner table one night. “You think this kid’s gonna get anywhere in school after the shit he’s gone through?” his dad barked, pointing his fork in Orc’s direction. “Hell, you think any of those poor kids will?”

His mom didn’t press the issue. Orc was glad. He didn’t want to go back to school ever again. There was no point—he wasn’t good at it, and he wasn’t going to get good at it unless Astrid was tutoring him, probably. But she was far away, living her life with Sam somewhere. He hoped she was still in California.

He missed Astrid, especially at night. That was when the bad memories crept in—when the desire to drink came back. She was the one person he deeply wanted to see again, aside from Howard.

It’s not like they had ever been friends—even after she lost God and cut her hair, they only talked sometimes. Still, she answered all his questions about the Bible. Sometimes, when Howard got sick of him asking stuff, he went to her, instead. He’d read out loud, slow and labored, while she listened and then explained what it all meant. It felt good to be with her, to see her again. Her short, scruffy hair, jagged at the ends, framed her long face and accentuated the point of her chin; the tan of her skin made her blue eyes seem even more vivid.

And when she hugged him….

Orc relived that moment over and over as he tried in vain to fall asleep, tried to summon the soft sensation of her arms encircling his neck, her chin resting on his shoulder. The way her chest rose and fell as it pressed against his. Inevitably, though, his mind drifted to more intimate things. It was so easy to imagine her lips grazing his, then latching on, urgent and sweet. 

Orc had never been kissed before, but he could imagine. He could imagine pretty well.

His breath hitched in his throat.

 _You will not gratify the desires of the flesh,_ he thought, staring unblinking and rigid at his bedroom ceiling. _The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by God...by the Spirit...something, something._

He couldn’t remember the rest.

Orc had almost forgotten about who his father was. He’d turned into a different person, it seemed. Quieter. More timid. Then he punched his mother in the stomach, enough to knock the wind out of her. Orc was watching TV when it happened. He saw it out of the corner of his eye. 

It happened in the kitchen. It made Orc’s skin crawl, how quickly it occurred. More than that, how _quietly_ , like his parents were in some kind of play. His dad drove his fist into his mom’s belly; her eyes bulged. Her legs wobbled and gave out. She fell on the floor with a thump, but didn’t make a sound. It would almost look comical if it was any other situation.

His dad then talked to her very quietly, looming over her. She scrambled to her feet and nodded. They both went on their way. His dad started making a second cup of coffee. His mother got out some Windex and began cleaning the counter.

Orc watched it unfold with wide eyes, feeling strange. Numb. The TV fell away. Everything fell away. All he remembered was the promise he’d made to himself back in the FAYZ, when the dome became transparent. 

He didn’t want to kill anyone, but his dad had used up his chances. Orc sat on the couch, feeling cold. He knew what he had to do. If his mom tried to stop him, if she tried to tell him that God would send him to hell for killing his dad, he’d tell her what he had told Dekka that one time: that hell was something God made up. It wasn’t real—it couldn’t be. God loved his creations. He wouldn’t send them to someplace like that, even if they were the worst of sinners. Even if they killed people.

It was one thing to decide to kill his father, Orc realized. It was another thing to put it into action. There were no guns in their new house—no belts—nothing that he could use to commit suicide. He’d heard his mother fretting about it to his dad when she watched one of those specials about the FAYZ. They thought he was out of earshot—they didn’t talk about that stuff when he was around—but Orc had heard them when he ambled into the kitchen to get some peanut butter.

“We should hide the knives, too,” said his mother.

His dad grunted.

Orc went back to his bedroom. He’d lost his appetite. Without any proper weapons, there was no way he could commit to his plan. Unless he beat his father to death. 

Just the thought made him feel sick. 

That night, after his parents had gone to sleep, he took one of his father’s Budweisers from the fridge and took it to his room. He carefully slid his mother’s Bible under his bed, popped the tab—again, he felt a rush of joy at the fact that his fingers were lithe and flexible—and drank. He just needed a little. Just enough to take the edge off. 

Orc slept in the next morning. That was no big deal; he slept a lot these days. He didn’t have much else to do. 

His dad said nothing about his missing beer, if he even noticed it was missing in the first place.  
  


Orc started rereading the Bible, starting from Genesis. He holed up in his room, only coming out for meals. He was thinking, he told himself. He was planning.

He took long naps. He tried not to think about drinking. He almost told his mom about all the shit he’d done in the FAYZ, before he found God, but something stopped him. He couldn’t take his mother’s pale, bony face withering with judgement. The less he told about what he’d done then, the better.

So, he hid away in his room, worked his dumbbells, and read. He was beginning to get stronger.

A week after his father punched his mother, Orc emerged from his room around mid-afternoon and went into the kitchen to eat lunch. His mother was eating a sandwich made of mayo, mustard, and salami. That was her favorite. 

“Hey,” Orc grunted.

“Hello,” she replied, not looking at him. When he started making his own sandwich, he got a bad feeling in his stomach. His mom was hiding some kind of injury from him, and doing an obvious job of it.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, trying to get a better look at her face.

“It’s not that bad, Charles,” she said faintly. She raised her head just enough so Orc could catch a glimpse of her black eye, swollen and ugly.

Orc went back to his room with his sandwich, stomach roiling. He read more of Genesis. The feeling gradually went away.  
  


Later that week, he put his Bible down and ambled out of his room. He looked at his father sitting on the couch with his can of Budweiser, his mom next to him. They were watching a dumbass sitcom. His dad didn’t laugh; he just stared at the television with glazed, sleepy eyes. But Orc had seen those eyes snap to life, like a switch had been turned, and his hands curl into fists. He’d seen the vein in his father’s neck pop and work, his meaty face redden, his voice rise to an enraged shout. It came naturally to him. He wasn’t going to change. He wasn’t going to get better.

If Orc didn’t do something, his dad was going to keep doing what he was doing. Keep beating on his mom whenever Orc wasn’t looking, like some kind of chickenshit coward. 

He tasted something sour deep in his throat.

His dad put his arm around his mother’s bony shoulders, and she leaned into him, laying her head on his chest.

Orc went back to his room.

  
  


Once his mom caught onto the fact that he was reading the Bible, she started making him go to church with her on Sundays. Orc sat through the sermon in a suit his parents bought him months ago. Now that he was eating a lot and using the dumbbells, it was almost too tight. His mother held his hand through the service, occasionally giving him a squeeze. Orc didn’t squeeze back. Being around all those other people made him feel strange, alien. He mouthed along to the hymns and prayers, not willing to risk stumbling over the words to melodies he hadn’t heard in forever.

While driving home, he asked, “Does it hurt?”

He was referring to the cast on his mother’s left arm. His dad knew she was right-handed, so it was always the left that he hurt. His mother blinked a little, adjusted her right hand on the steering wheel, and made a wincing smile. It was a familiar, hateful expression. It was one that said, _Please don’t hurt me. Look how nice I’m being. Please, please, please._

It hardly ever worked.

 _Dumb dishrag,_ Orc thought, almost reflexively.

“No,” his mother said in her high, wispy voice, staring straight at the road ahead. “It doesn’t hurt much anymore, baby.”

He didn’t know what to say after that. “He shouldn’t do that to you,” he said, voice low and sullen.

“I know. You’re sweet,” she replied. Even when she was being grateful, she sounded nervous. Jumpy. “You’re always so good to me, Charlie.”

Orc shifted in the passenger seat. For sure, his suit was too tight. 

“Maybe...maybe...we can go away,” he mumbled.

“What?” Her mother took her eyes off the road and briefly glanced at him. “Oh, no, Charles.” She sounded almost condescending, like her poor, dumb son had made a spelling mistake or something. “We have our rough patches, your father and me. But we love each other.”

Orc remembered picking up that hammer, after his dad had drilled into his finger that one time. He remembered seeing his mother, sharp-eyed and rigid, in the doorway. _If you kill your father, you go to hell,_ she’d said. She wasn’t blubbering. She wasn’t crying. She was calm. Put together. Her eyes glinted with hard steel.

Back then, Orc wondered if she’d ever told his father that about him. If she ever said, _If you kill your son, you go to hell,_ in that same steadfast, sure voice. 

He didn’t think so.

Hatred welled in Orc like vomit. He stared gloomily through the window at the trees passing by. He didn’t want to look at her stupid face.

His mother turned on the radio. 

His father didn’t touch him. Didn’t hit him. Even when Orc took more than one beers from his fridge. More than two beers.

He drank them secretly, late at night. Sometimes he cried when he did it. He knew it was wrong. He wanted to be good, but it was so hard. It was easy to be angry. It was easy to drown in cans of beer. 

He hid his Bible under his bed for a long time.

  
  


_Dear Astrid_

_God says do not repay evil with evil but with blessings or whatever. But what if someone keeps doing evil and won’t stop? What if the person their doing the evil to won’t_

_Dear Astrid_

_I’m drinking again. I know its wrong. I’m trying to stop but its hard. I feel so bad again. Not like in the FAYZ, its not that bad, but different. I feel low. Really low. Maybe deppressed or something. I wish_

_Dear Astrid_

_I miss you. Been thinking about you alot lately. Are you living with Sam now or_

It was three in the morning and Orc was trying and failing to write a letter. He knew that he’d never be able to send it, but he’d seen on some therapy TV show that writing down stuff could help. He limited himself to half a can of Budweiser while he made his attempts. 

He was staying up later and later. Whenever he went to sleep he had dreams about Howard, or dreams he couldn’t remember that nevertheless made his heart race. It was easier to stay awake.

He found his eyelids sinking as he crumpled up his last letter and threw it against the opposite wall of his bedroom. This wasn’t working. It wasn’t alleviating the restless boredom he felt—in fact, it was making it worse. All he could think was that Astrid would never read what he was writing. That was probably a good thing, but it didn’t feel like it.

He tossed his pen and pad of paper on the side of his bed, then stretched out on his bedspread. He stared at the ceiling.

He didn’t want to hurt anybody anymore. That wasn’t who he was. In Christ, he was a new creation. He was a good guy, now—Astrid had said so.

When he slept, he dreamed of Howard. Instead of trying to open the vending machine himself, he was begging Orc to do it, growing more desperate by the minute. But Orc still couldn’t answer him—his tongue was too heavy and slow. The words wouldn’t come together. 

“You’re the strong one!” Howard cried. “Come on, just real quick! Bash it with your bat! Before the other kids come!”

“I got rid of the bat,” Orc tried to explain. “‘Cause of Bette.” But when he looked down, he was clutching it in his hands, the metal cold and smooth.

“I got it back for you,” Howard said. “I cleaned it up.” His eyes were wide. “Come on, man. Do it for me, okay?”

“You’re dead, Howard,” Orc tried to say. “You can’t order me around no more.” 

  
  


The days passed slowly. Orc watched as his mother’s injuries changed from black eyes to bruises to broken wrists and back again. He wandered around his neighborhood and walked back and forth into town. He looked for places to buy knives or something, but stopped upon realizing that his mother would surely find any he bought when she cleaned his room. If he told her to stop, she might get suspicious. 

Deep down, he knew those were excuses. He didn’t want to kill his father. The pain would be too much. His mother was used to being a punching bag. The more he sunk into the repetition of living in their house, the easier it was to take it.

He’d already been through so much, he reasoned as he walked aimlessly around the parking lot of a local 7-Eleven, eating a candy bar. God wouldn’t make it so he had to suffer more. God wouldn’t do that to him. He loved him.

Besides, he continued to reason as he walked home, didn’t God help those who helped themselves? His mother wasn’t helpless; she could leave if she wanted to. She could’ve left long ago and taken him with her. She could—no, _should_ —have protected him. He was her kid. Didn’t that mean anything?

The more he thought about it, the angrier Orc became. He stalked around his neighborhood, restless, overwhelmed with a low-simmering misery. Another wave of loneliness was hitting. He missed Howard. He missed Astrid.

He strode into his house and cracked open a Budweiser. His dad, sitting on the couch in a drunken doze, didn’t look at him. He could hear his mother upstairs, vacuuming. Orc drank his beer and stared at his father out of the corner of his eye. He thought about hitting him, but didn’t. Instead, he went to his room.

  
  


_Dear Astrid_

_I think I’m becoming weak in my heart maybe. My dad’s beating on my mom all the time but I can’t make myself hit him. Wether I hurt him or don’t hurt him I’ll feel bad and sick I think. When I go to church on Sundays I pray for Howard’s soul. I know he’s in Heaven but I pray to make sure._

_Hope your doing alright._

_Charles_

Church was getting easier. Orc went with his mom every Sunday. They didn’t talk, but they sang hymns and said the prayers together. Orc was starting to like singing. 

“That Ellison girl’s publishing a book about it,” said his mother one morning as Orc ate breakfast. He froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. He didn’t have to ask what “it” was.

“Oh,” he said.

“I read it in this week’s paper,” she said. “It didn’t make the front page. There’s been other books by other...survivors.” She took a long draw of her coffee. “Still,” she continued. “She’s supposed to be very smart.”

“I know,” Orc said. His voice sounded foreign to his ears. “She tutored me.”

  
  


He went to the book signing. It was at a bookstore a couple hours away. There was a mass of reporters, journalists, curious onlookers. He pushed into the throng, desperate, while his mother lingered awkwardly on the outskirts of the crowd. He elbowed his way through, thankful that he’d been making use of his dumbbells. He wasn’t as big as he once was, but he wasn’t weak, either.

Finally, he caught a glimpse of her blonde hair, her blue eyes. She was sitting in a folding chair behind a folding table. She wore a crisp blue cardigan. Her hair was tied back in a prim, sleek ponytail. She held a copy of her book in her hands. She was signing its cover with a ballpoint pen and handing it to a young woman.

Orc’s heart jumped. He realized dimly that there was a line, but for now all he could do was stare. He’d forgotten how pretty she was.

The line was long. Orc wondered if Astrid would recognize him. His cheeks were still a little hollow. The surgery that had reconstructed parts of his face that were burned in the blast had been mostly successful, but his mouth worked oddly now. It wasn’t enough to make his words mushy, but it was still noticeable. And his skin puckered in around his left eye. And his right leg dragged slightly when he walked. It was harder to grab stuff now; he had to focus extra hard to do so.

Fear suddenly took hold as he inched further up the line. Orc realized he didn’t have a book for her to autograph. He hoped she wouldn’t mind. 

“Astrid,” he said as he finally reached her. She looked at him with a brief, polite smile, looking down at his hands, as if looking for one of her books to sign. She looked up again, confused—then, her eyes widened.

“Charles?” she asked in a low voice, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

Orc smiled. It was good to smile again. “Hey, Astrid.”

“You’re out of the hospital,” she said, slowly.

“Yeah.”

Behind Orc, someone coughed pointedly.

She reached one hand out and squeezed his wrist. “Wait for me outside,” she said. “I want to catch up.” Her eyes were intense.

Orc did what she said. He idled outside the bookstore with his hands in his pockets. His mother stood with him, wringing her hands, until she admitted that she had to go home to start preparing dinner. She gave him money for the bus and left soon after. He didn’t mind; he sat against the bookstore front, trying to ignore the excitement he felt.

“Hi,” Astrid said. Orc woke with a start, his hand flying to massage the stiffness in his neck. He got unsteadily to his feet—his legs were asleep. 

They walked side by side, with Orc trailing off the curb with his hands in his pockets. “So,” he began awkwardly. “Uh. You wrote a book.”

“Yes,” Astrid supplied, “I did.” She smiled.

Orc smiled back. “I wanted to write you a letter,” he admitted, before he lost his nerve. “But I didn’t know where you lived.”

Astrid laughed a little. “What about emails? Or text messages?”

He shrugged, face growing warm. “I didn’t know your email or phone number, either.” He paused, then added, “You’re smart. I guess I thought you might like a letter. More...I dunno.”

“Respectable?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“I suppose that makes sense. But I’m pretty up on modern technology, too, you know.” She paused. “You look good.”

“What? Oh. Yeah. They did an okay job on me. Some of me got burned from the missile, but not too much.”

“I remember,” she replied soberly.

They walked in silence for a little bit.

Orc looked at her sideways. “You living with Sam now?”

“Yeah. Diana, too.”

“Oh.”

“We’re doing okay. I spent a lot of time working on my book.”

“Sorry I didn’t buy it back there. I mean, I didn’t really think about it. I just wanted to—I mean, yeah. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. It’s on the New York bestsellers list already, and it’s only been sent out to a few publishers.” She paused, then added, “But then again, all the other FAYZ books make it on that.”

“I’ll read it soon.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Sam and Diana have already told me they can’t. It would only re-traumatize them, they said.” Astrid gave a shrug. “I understand. How could I not?” 

She sounded a little sad. Orc watched her out of the corner of his eye. She kicked at the curb, somewhat listless, as they walked. 

“Besides,” she added after a minute, “I know how hard reading is for you.”

“I’m rereading the Bible,” he said, almost defensively. “I’m on the Book of Ruth.”

“Good.” Astrid nodded. “Whatever helps.”

They walked in silence for a little while. The sky was growing golden as the sun set on the horizon. Orc wasn’t sure where they were or where they were going. He wasn’t sure if Astrid knew, either. That was okay, though. It was nice just to walk with her. It was nice just to feel the warm California breeze lightly tug at his shirt.

Sometimes, the FAYZ felt like a bad dream—a bad, year-long dream. This, Orc thought, was one of those times.

Eventually, they came across a swing set in a park. They sat. The narrow bend of the swing’s canvas seat dug into the meat of Orc’s thighs. When he shifted, the swing moved, making the chains jingle. Astrid stared soberly at ground, the tip of her sandal making a line in the sand. “I’m glad you came,” she said after a few minutes of contemplative silence. “After the missile strike...I thought you were going to be in a coma.”

“I was, I think. I don’t remember.”

“Forgetting can be a defense mechanism against trauma,” she mused.

“Oh.”

“I meant...I don’t know. I thought you might be....” She shrugged again, not looking at him. “I guess that doesn’t matter. I’m very glad you came to see me.”

“I’ve…” Orc paused, then mumbled in a rush, “I’ve missed you.”

Astrid looked at him sadly. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I should have visited you in the hospital,” she said. “I was just so busy.”

“It’s okay. I’m out, now.”

She smiled at him in her melancholy way. “How’s the adjustment going?”

He winced and shrugged.

Astrid laughed. She sounded only a little bitter.

  
  


It was getting dark. The air turned chilly as they started walking back. Astrid accompanied Orc to the bus stop with her cardigan buttoned up and her hands tucked under her armpits. “Who’s picking you up?” he asked her.

She shrugged, sounding sheepish. “My parents. We have plans to go out to dinner to celebrate the publication. I have to go home and change first, though. Sam and Diana are coming. We have reservations.”

“Oh. Nice.”

“Yeah. It is.” She faced him. He couldn’t see her too well, because the streetlights hadn’t gone on yet, but he could smell the sweet scent of her perfume. Vanilla. 

“I missed you.”

Astrid sounded bewildered. “You said that before.”

“Yeah.” He reached for her hands. They were warm and petite. Her fingers were thin and bony. He interlaced his fingers with hers and gave them a gentle squeeze. The growing darkness was making him feel bold. Her perfume seemed to wreathe around him, intoxicating. He could sense her looking up at him—she wasn’t too much shorter than him anymore, he realized. A good, full diet had made her grow taller; his stone skin, peeled away, made him shorter. 

They were both growing older. They were so young. 

The realization hit Orc like a wave.

“If you want, you can email me,” Astrid said in a low voice. She disentangled her fingers from his and dug in her purse for her pen. Orc flinched when he felt the small pressure of the ball point on the inside of his wrist. She wrote out her email address in a quick scrawl, sending a shiver up his whole arm. 

“Email?” Orc echoed.

“It’s easier than writing letters, and better for long-form writing than texting or instant messaging,” she explained.

The bus was approaching.

The streetlight flicked on. They both blinked as the light illuminated each other’s faces.

Orc didn’t know what to say. He felt giddy. The bus doors unfolded; people started pouring out. Astrid put the pen back in her purse and zipped it closed.

“Well,” she said, sounding a little awkward, “I guess this is goodbye.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Uh huh.” Orc felt like he was drunk off her perfume or something. He realized he hadn’t told her about the Budweisers he’d been sneaking. 

_Shit_. 

Oh, well.

“Thanks again for coming to see me,” Astrid said.

“Yeah. I love—it was good to see you again.” Orc stepped forward and hesitated. The smell of her perfume was so sweet and strong. He could feel sweat beading on his brow. He leaned over and bumped his lips against hers.

Astrid stepped back after a brief moment. She looked surprised and not surprised at the same time. And, as always, faintly sad.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You almost died,” she said. “It’s okay.” She sounded like she was talking to herself more than she was to him.

“Bye,” Orc said, and started to turn around.

Then Astrid stepped forward and put her hand on his shoulder. When he turned around, she pushed her mouth on his, sweet and soft. 

“Email me,” she whispered in his ear, her breath warm on his earlobe. “Okay?” She squeezed his hand.

Orc hardly realized he’d gotten on the bus and sat down until it started pulling away.

He looked at the cramped little black letters on his wrist. 

He felt more awake than he had in a long, long time.


End file.
